Augustus: The Life and Times of the Founder of the Roman Empire

by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh

Improvements at Rome.

Nor did he meanwhile forget to encourage restoration at Rome, to which he had already given a strong impulse. Nothing had damaged Antony in the eyes of the Romans more than the report of his intention to transfer the seat of Empire to Alexandria. A similar report as to the establishment of an imperial city for the East at Ilium caused a like uneasiness a few years later, which found expression in one of Horace’s most spirited odes.[218] Cæsar prudently shewed not only that he held firmly by the Imperial position of Rome, but that he also wished to make it externally worthy to be the capital of the world. As in all his projects, no one co-operated more loyally than Agrippa. But others also were pressed into the service; and those especially who had earned triumphs were encouraged to use a portion at least of their spoils in public works. In the next few years there was a great outburst of temple restoration,[219] and it became the fashion among the immediate friends and followers of Augustus to signalise their tenure of office or a military success by undertaking some important building. Horace again has reflected the view of such matters which the official classes were expected to take, and perhaps to a certain extent did take. The sufferings of the Romans in the revolutionary period had undoubtedly been great. The ruinous state of the temples was doubtless connected with the unsettled times—whether as cause or consequence, who could exactly say? It was not unnatural to suppose that among the other delicta maiorum this too had moved the wrath of the gods. At any rate moral laxity went side by side with scepticism and neglect of religious observances. Nor need we regard either poet or emperor as a monster of hypocrisy in supporting such a doctrine. Habit and tradition are stronger than philosophy. There always remains the Incalculable after all our reasoning; and many to-day regret the decay of religious sentiment as a public misfortune, who are yet profoundly uncertain as to what they in truth believe themselves.

Honours bestowed on Cæsar, B.C. 30-27.

On his return from Asia and Greece, where he had spent the winter and spring of B.C. 30-29, Cæsar was received with enthusiasm by all classes. Solemn sacrifice was offered by the consul in the name of the people, and every honour which the Senate could bestow was awaiting his acceptance. Those voted after Actium were lavishly increased in September B.C. 30, on the news of Antony’s death and the occupation of Alexandria. Two triumphal arches were to be erected, one at Rome and another at Brundisium;[220] the temple of the divine Iulius was to be adorned with the prows of captured ships; his own birthday, the day of the victory at Actium, and that of the entry into Alexandria were to be for ever sacred; the Vestal Virgins and the whole people were to meet him on his return in solemn procession; he was to have the foremost seat at all festivals; and was to celebrate three triumphs—one for the victory over the Dalmatian and neighbouring tribes, a second for Actium, and a third for Egypt. The tribunicia potestas for life had again been voted to him with the right of exercising it within a mile radius beyond the walls. He was to have the right to hear all cases on appeal and to have a casting vote in all courts. His name was to be mentioned in public prayers for the state. On the 1st of January, B.C. 29, all his acta had been confirmed; and when it became known that the Parthians had referred a disputed succession to the throne to his arbitration, some fresh honours were devised. The disasters under Crassus and Antony had made the Romans particularly sensitive in regard to the Parthians; and this apparent acknowledgment by them of a superiority attaching to Augustus, however indefinite, was represented by the court party and the court poets, not only as a veritable triumph over the Parthians, but as a step in a career of Eastern conquest of almost unlimited extent.[221] Accordingly his name was now to be coupled with those of the gods in hymns; a tribe was named Iulia in his honour; he was to wear the chaplet of victory in all assemblies; and to nominate as many members as he chose to all the sacred colleges. Cæsar accepted most of these honours, but begged to be excused the procession on his return. This was an honour which he always avoided if he could, preferring to enter the city quietly by night. It was no doubt a trying ordeal at the end of a long journey, and he may have felt like Cromwell that a larger crowd still would have come out to see him hanged. The three triumphs, however, were now celebrated with the greatest splendour, especially the third over Egypt, in which a figure of the dead queen lying upon a couch, with son and daughter beside her, was a prominent feature.

The increase of the Patriciate and the Census.

Cæsar now had ample powers for every purpose of government. The tribunicia potestas in itself gave him legislative initiative and control over other departments. It was afterwards regarded as the most important of his powers. But in his first measures of reform he availed himself rather of his powers as consul. The consulship was to be really, as it always remained nominally, the chief state office, combining all the prerogatives once centred in the rex. Thus in holding the Census of B.C. 28 he acted as Consul with his colleague Agrippa, exercising indeed a censoria potestas, though not one formally bestowed, but as inherent in the consulship.[222] He concluded it with the solemn lustrum, which had not been performed for forty-two years, the last Censors (B.C. 50) having apparently been prevented from performing this solemnity by the outbreak of civil war. The Census was made the occasion of a reform in the ordines and especially of the Senate. In the first place, he recruited the dwindling number of patrician gentes by raising certain plebeian families to the patriciate, as his own family had been raised by Iulius in B.C. 45 in virtue of a lex Cassia. The same power was now accorded to him by a law proposed by L. Sænius, who was consul during the last two months of B.C. 30. The object seems to have been to preserve a kind of nobility, which at the same time should have certain political disabilities. The patricians, indeed, still had the exclusive right of being appointed to certain religious offices, but, on the other hand, they were debarred from the tribuneship and the plebeian ædileship,[223] the two offices in which a man by legislative proposals or lavish expenditure might make himself politically conspicuous.

The lectiones Senatus.

A similar desire to restore the ancient order of the State prompted his reformation of the Senate. The powers of this body had always been great precisely because they were not defined by law; and by associating it with himself he would gain all the advantages of this indefiniteness and prestige, while really keeping full control of it. Iulius Cæsar had made the mistake of treating it with studied disrespect, and his chief enemies were within its walls. The Triumvirs, though in reality despotic, had looked to it to give their acta an outward show of legality. Thus on Octavian’s demand it had condemned Q. Gallius in B.C. 43, and Salvidienus in B.C. 40, for treason. It had confirmed the triumviral acta en bloc, giving Antony charge of the Parthian war and ratifying his arrangements in the East in advance. It had voted triumphs and other honours to the triumvirs and their agents. It was the Senate that in B.C. 41 voted L. Antonius an hostis, that in B.C. 32 decreed war against Cleopatra, deposed Antony from consulship and imperium, and in B.C. 31-30 voted the various honours and powers to the victorious Cæsar. The late civil war had in a way made the importance of the Senate more prominent. So many Senators had joined Antony at Alexandria that, like Sertorius in Spain and Pompey in Epirus, he had professed to have the Senate with him. The victory of Actium had pricked that bubble, and the Senate at Rome remained the only Senate of the Empire. Cæsar was wise to put himself under the ægis of this ancient and still respected body. But it was necessary to secure its dignity and effectiveness, which had suffered in various ways during the revolutionary period. Among other things its numbers had been swollen and often with men of inferior social standing. Iulius Cesar had filled it with his creatures—provincials from Gaul and Spain, sons of freedmen, centurions, soldiers, and peregrini—so that a pasquinade was put up by some wit that “no one was to show a new Senator the way to the Senate House.”[224] Another batch of Senators was introduced after Cæsar’s death, chiefly by Antony, in virtue of real or fictitious entries found in Cæsar’s papers, whom the populace nicknamed “post-mortem Senators” (Senatores orcini),[225] or sometimes even on their own initiative without any other formality than assuming the laticlave and senatorial shoe.[226] Many Senators no doubt perished in the proscriptions, in the subsequent battles of Philippi and Perusia, and in the contests with Sextus Pompeius, but the Triumvirs appear to have been lavish in enrolling new members without regard to fortune, origin, or official position; and so careless were they in this matter that cases are recorded of unenfranchised slaves having obtained office and seats in the Senate and being then recognised and claimed by their masters.[227] The result was that at the time of the battle of Actium there were more than a thousand Senators.[228] This was too large a number for practical work, without taking into consideration inferiority of character. No doubt a good many who had sided with Antony disappeared in various ways; but in now making a formal lectio Cæsar resolved to reduce the number still more. Sixty voluntarily resigned and were allowed to retain the purple and certain social distinctions, but a hundred and forty were simply omitted from the new list. By this means the roll was reduced to about six hundred, which continued to be the number in subsequent lectiones.

To secure their attendance and to prevent interference in the provinces the regulation was enforced which prohibited any Senator from leaving Italy (except for Sicily or Gallia Narbonensis) unless he had imperium or was on a legatio,[229] that is, practically, unless he was serving the state in some way on Cæsar’s nomination. In the next lectio (B.C. 19) Augustus tried an elaborate system of co-option, by nominating thirty on the existing roll, each of whom were to name five who were to draw lots for admission, and so on till the number was made up. But finding that it was not worked fairly he stopped this and made up the roll himself. This continued to be the system, but as time went on the difficulty was not so much to exclude unworthy men as to induce enough of the right sort to serve. Membership became less attractive as the imperial power developed, and the holding of profitable offices depended on the will of the Emperor, who was not bound to select from the Senate. Moreover, a property qualification was now required. None had existed under the republic by definite law, though a certain fortune was regarded as practically necessary; and as the Senate was recruited from the ordo equester, a minimum was in the last century of the republic automatically secured. Cæsar fixed 800,000 sesterces, and later on a million sesterces as the Senatorial fortune, though in cases of special fitness he gave grants to enable men to maintain their position. Still the honour of membership was not found to make up for its disabilities—the difficulty of going abroad and the prohibition as to engaging in commerce. In B.C. 13 Augustus was obliged to compel men who had the property qualification to serve. Even then the attendance was so slack that in B.C. 11 the old quorum of four hundred was reduced. In B.C. 9 various regulations were introduced to facilitate business, such as the publication of an order of the day (λεύκωμα), fixed days of meeting, a variation as to the quorum required for different kinds of business, a scale of fines for non-attendance, the selection by lot of thirty-five Senators to attend during September and October, and an extension to the prætors of the power of bringing business before the house. Towards the end of the life of Augustus, when his age made it too much of an exertion to meet the full Senate, a committee of sixteen Senators was selected by lot to confer with him at his own house. The inevitable consequence was that this small committee practically settled most questions, which only came formally before the whole body, whose administrative function was farther lessened by the diminished importance of the ærarium as compared with the imperial treasury or fiscus. Finally, it lost the right of coining silver, retaining only the bronze. On the whole, then, the tendency was towards restricting the functions of the Senate and making membership less attractive. But this does not appear to have been the original design of Augustus. He habitually addressed it with respect, referred all his powers to its confirmation, and took it into his confidence on imperial affairs. He revived the ancient dignity of princeps Senatus—in abeyance since the death of Cicero—and held that rank himself all his life. Certain of the provinces were still left to its management, and cases of majestas were referred to its decision. The publication of the Senate’s acta had originated with Iulius Cæsar (B.C. 59), who was not likely to have done anything to enhance its prestige. The prohibition of this publication by Augustus was perhaps intended partly to protect the proceedings from criticism, partly to emphasise the fact that the Senate shared with him the intimate secrets of government which it was not for the public advantage to have generally known. The effect, however, was not good; what could not be ascertained with exactness from official sources was often misrepresented by irresponsible rumour, and one of the early measures of Tiberius was to reverse this order.[230]

The end of the anarchy.